I understand the discussion but I don’t spend one minute a year thinking about TSU. They’re no different than HCU or Sam Houston to me. I will say that having a university in the middle of the Third Ward is a stabilizing presence for the neighborhood, though.
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No I don’t think they should nor do I think it will ever happen. TSU is an HBCU and should remain one.
Born universities exist for entirely different reasons
However you know that you might be the minority in that opinion. The thing is, this is truly a question for TSU, it’s students, alumni, and stakeholders first and not a UH discussion. Any change should come because the TSU community wants it to happen.
Also, UH absorbing TSU through merger would end up eliminating programs. Like why would we need two schools of law? Two pharmacy programs etc. So TSU and it’s programs would be eliminated and effectively erased. If both law schools each have 400 students (just a number I grabbed out of the air), a merged UH/TSU might only end up having slots for 500 and not 800. So you just eliminated educational opportunities for 300 people. This might be seen as a new injustice created which will not “repair” a previous one. Just a bad idea.
I haven’t read all the posts in this thread yet so if someone already mentioned some of this, sorry.
Personally, I would love to see TSU thrive. Unfortunately they have a long history of financial mismanagement. Every time they started to seem like they were improving there would be another scandal.
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Would UH hire TSU employees if that happened? You have some tsu employees who could do 3 things for every 1 thing a UH employee does cause UH has overhired in some areas or not forced some to learn more than 1 specific job task
There’s books on this - TSU was supposed to mimic UT across the board - they were going to be a threat cause enrollment grew quickly so the state stepped in - too many militant people were coming out of there and entering the political arena in houston and the state also
Tsu never got the dental, medical, etc schools promised and that was by design - plus other schools accepted integration seeing that was another revenue stream and they got a new piece of the puzzle
You get those things change overnight
Where did you get that idea from?
Something something duplication of services.
UH and TSU have shared some research and grants in the recent past.
From the quick Googling I’ve done, TSU wants to stay independent. They recently signed one of these with Rice just last year.
Let’s not pretend that we “know” better about the future of TSU. It doesn’t read well.
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Observation - trust me
If a system offered a plan where tsu could benefit it wouldn’t be a hard sell - if someone wants to invest a billion dollar’s worth of infrastructure to offset decades of underfunding amongst other stuff not hard
Prairie View has benefited easily from the A&M system
Utrgv has exploded thanks to that merger with Texas southmost
Lol I don’t think anyone even mentioned this.
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I did but not quite as clearly as FormerShasta.
Texas Southern leads the league in scandals. I wish them well but no thanks on a merger.
Are you personally involved with both schools? If you are let us know how you came up with such a bold statement. Give us some facts/proofs. If you can’t edit your statement please.
The intent for this thread is about the very intent of TSU’s creation. We are either one people or we have multiple Universities representing multiple ethnicities. This is unique to the South due to segregation. From an historical perspective I would love to know if a “merger” was discussed when segregation was finally abolished?
Mergers have happened in all industries. Could this be possible? None of us know the answers. Only administrators do. Nobody can make statements about eliminating educational opportunities because again we do not know.
Again friends my thread’s intent is looking back at how/why both Junior Colleges that became Universities later were started/created. Is there a precedent to a UH/TSU in other states?
HBCUs aren’t unique to the south. Most are there but not all.
In any case, I don’t get the sense that HBCUs want to merge with non-HBCUs. Do you have anything that indicates that?
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No, I meant that I don’t even think that was the premise for the thread.
Yes, a merger could happen. Now of course, we can only speculate on what might happen to programs in a merger. However, as someone who has been through several mergers, ythere is always consolidation. Also, it makes no financial sense to all of the sudden have duplicative programs and that means at the very least, some instructors and administrative positions would be eliminated. This is “business 101” as you would say. Also, I believe it is logical, knowing the way government operates that you would expect the funds that support two schools to be slashed when they become one. So, programs and student opportunities would suffer. Is it possible that our state legislature would do the opposite of that and keep the merged programs at their current size? Sure, it is possible but I don’t think very likely.
I think you will find the TSU stakeholders would be quite against a merger that would end up eliminating programs or at least would possibly eliminate programs. As I said before, I would guess that many of those stakeholders would see a merger as an additional injustice, and not a repair of a prior one. There would be fear of this being a loss of opportunities, especially in a time when DEI offices and programs have been removed from state schools. I think you may find the emotional resistance high, even if a merger makes fiscal sense. You can advocate for this all you want and try to convince people that this is needed to right previous wrongs, but I don’t think you will find too many people in the TSU community agree with you.
Really, Former Shasta nailed it on the head when he said…
My question for you, Chris. Has any other HBCU had a merger like this proposed, attempted or completed? If so, how did that turn out and how did the community react?
lol, sure, whatever.
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Did I write I wanted to convince people? I find it fascinating that two schools within walking distance were created for the same purpose. One, TSU was to be the African American (horrific title) UH version. Again was TSU was only created because of segregation. This is why I asked the following question. When was segregation was lifted was a merger discussed between the two schools? The fact that U of H became a University in 1934 might be the main reason why it was not then or later. Again I do not know. Dustin you ask me a question about other HBCU schools. Read my earlier post. I asked the same question.
Let me ask you this, how do you think a merger would “repair an horrific historical injustice”? Can you explain that?
Slavery, segregation should have never happened in the first place. By merging, the message is that all are created equal. IMO this should have been done as soon as segregation was lifted. Again MY opinion.